Categories

Content Type

SBC schools to support small businesses during COVID-19

The Department of BEIS has approved the refocusing of the Leading to Grow Programme, which was launched in September 2019, to help small businesses deal with the impact of COVID-19.

The programme will now shift to providing general support for small businesses during this very challenging time. At the very least it will support those microbusinesses that were enrolled on the initial iteration of the programme.

Leading to Grow is a programme led by the SBC, working with a consortium of 15 business schools across England. The programme was originally designed to support microbusinesses to grow, innovate and increase productivity through adoption of digital and other relevant new technologies.

Workshops have been taking place across England offering eligible businesses the opportunity to help small business leaders develop their management capabilities to exploit the potential of digital technologies. The results were planned to be part of a national randomised control trial to assess the impact of mentoring support for microbusinesses.

The randomised control trial element of the scheme has now been removed, and the remaining resources will be used to provide online workshops on challenges emerging from current crisis, as well as allocating business school Entrepreneurs-in-Residence to provide one-to-one support to the businesses who have completed the first initial workshops.

The SBC is currently working with the 15 Business schools and the Government's Department of BEIS on updating the project plan for this and we hope to have that in place soon. Please watch this space for more details to follow.